Annual Review 2011/12 - Glasgow Life

18 Glasgow Life Annual Review 2011/12
Glasgow Libraries’ commitment to digital
learning further supports the City’s employability
agenda with 39% of learners signing up
for courses to improve their job prospects in
2011/12. Half of the learners were registered
unemployed and 41% of learners wanted to
learn a new skill. There were more than 11,000
attendances at computer classes.
11,000+
ATTENDANCES
Business @ The Mitchell provides support to
the self-employed, those looking to establish
new ventures and open workshops teaching
businesses to use databases to conduct
research, or improve sales. This provides an
environment where enterprise, work and skills
development is encouraged. One database,
ProQuest, which provides online information
resources has been accessed more than 1.5
million times in the last year.
The Mitchell offers a commercial Editorial
Library service for media organisations. Tim
Blott, the Managing Director of the Herald and
Times Group commended the service, saying:
“Information is the lifeblood of media
companies and we are delighted with the
service we receive from The Mitchell. The
quality and speed of response to inquiries
and the depth of expertise on everything
from information architecture to metadata
satisfy our most demanding requirements
and deadlines.”
Glasgow Museums is one of five partner
institutions collaborating with the British
Museum on the Future Curators programme.
The scheme gives curatorial trainees the
opportunity to spend 18 months working in
two museums to develop curatorial skills and
undertake a diploma in curatorship. After
a month placement at the British Museum,
trainees work with Glasgow Museums for a
year. During the first phase of the programme
one trainee joined us to work on the World
Cultures collection, focusing on the collection’s
Australasian material.
The Museums Association’s Monument Trust
Fellowship scheme provides an opportunity
for retiring museum professionals to work
with colleagues and successors to share
their specialist collections knowledge. During
2011/12 Glasgow Museums secured a grant
of £4,500 to enable a recently retired Curator
of Ancient Civilisations to work part-time
and fund knowledge transfer and outreach
activities such as a networking day for Scottish
Egyptologists.
Glasgow Sport supported, trained and
developed over 180 students through
volunteering opportunities. The students were
trained to deliver sport in local communities,
schools, clubs or within their own college or
university.
Glasgow Sport has recruited over 170
Glasgow Ambassadors to support the London
2012 Olympic Games events in Glasgow. The
Ambassadors will benefit through learning in a
voluntary capacity that will give them the skills
to be involved in any world class event. The
key areas of their volunteering experience will
include the Olympic Torch Relay, the cultural
festival and football at Hampden.
The Participative Democracy course is
a partnership project between Lourdes
Secondary School and Glasgow Communities
in the south offering pupils the opportunity
to undertake leadership skills training and
obtain a recognised qualification. Glasgow
Life was the first organisation to develop and
offer the course which supports young people
to get involved in the democratic process
and to become leaders in their schools and
communities. There were 22 pupils from S6
engaged in the programme.
Glasgow Sport’s Development team has been
involved in a variety of volunteering programmes
in the City. Rugby Development created a
partnership with the University of Strathclyde,
which enabled 11 third-year sports students to
deliver 1,100 hours of voluntary coaching within
the rugby community programme as part of a